One of the worst aspects of our current hyper-polarized political climate is that many institutions that the American people used to rely upon for something close to objectivity and reliable, politically-untinted information have turned into partisan propaganda.
Journalism is long gone, of course; the notion of the “objective” media died among anyone who pays attention nearly four decades ago. The civil service bureaucracy is largely beholden to the big government unions. Clergy at all too many mainline Protestant and Catholic churches are air-headed liberal chanting-point-bots.
And now, the left is trying to co-opt science – or at least how the public perceives science.
One of the cultural left’s favorite conceits is to try to wrap itself in the trappings of “science” – or, like the Wizard of Oz, at least enough trappings to keep the ignorant in line.
And I’ve seen few more brazen examples of this than Susan Perry’s interview in the MinnPost last Tuesday with Dr. Steven Miles, who Perry credits as “a professor of medicine and bioethics at the University of Minnesota”.
The list of titles lends credibility to Dr. Miles’ responses. And apparently Ms. Perry thinks that’s enough.
As we’ll see, it’s not.
Establish The Boogie/Straw Men – Perry opens the door for the de rigeur nod to Alinsky:
MinnPost: Do you believe that public-health officials are doing enough to reduce gun violence?
Before Dr. Miles gets to his answer, I’d like to draw your attention to Berg’s Seventh Law: “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds.”
Dr. Steve Miles: No, I don’t, and partly it’s because they’re hamstrung. Since 1996, the NRA, which also functions as an anti-science institution, has cut U.S. funding for gun-related research from a public-health perspective by over 95 percent. So, in terms of impairing the types of data collection and data analysis that’s necessary to do a public-health perspective, we’ve currently wound up in a situation where the science itself is impaired.
“Anti-science”.
“Racist”. “Anti-Woman”. “Bigot”.
They’re all slurs that the cultural left uses to try to cow conservatives into silence and compliance.
But the public health community impaired its own science decades ago by allowing itself to be co-opted into an arm of the gun control movement. “Public health research” is paid for by anti-gun groups (a fact that’s never reported by a media that seems to have lost interest in afflicting the intellectually and politically comfortable). Indeed, an amazing preponderance of “academic inquiry” into the Second Amendment is paid for by anti-gun organizations like the Joyce Foundation – legal, political, and academic, across the board.
As to the actual “science” that Dr. Miles is flogging? We’ll come back to that.
Facial Absurdities – Next, Miles turns to the left’s canonical notion that without guns, everything would be juuuuust fine:
MP: What do you think will most surprise your audience on Wednesday about gun-violence statistics?
SM: Clearly, everybody understands that having a gun available increases the lethality — that is, the deadliness — of the suicidal impulse. If one has a suicidal impulse and there is a gun available as opposed to a knife, then the suicide attempt is much more likely to be lethal.
I’ll give Miles this much: everyone knows that mental illness and guns don’t mix.
But availability of guns has little to do with suicide rates. The suicide rate in the US is statistically identical to that in the UK, with its celebrated gun ban. It’s a shade below Cuba, where only police and the military have guns. It’s 15% lower than Hong Kong, where guns are not part of the culture; a little over half those of China and Japan, where civilian guns are strictly banned.
One – or Dr. Miles – could reply “but that’s a matter of cultural differences”. And then one would be onto something, something that applies across the gun control debate.
We’ll come back to that, too.
What’s so interesting is that it’s also true for homicide. The idea advanced by the NRA people is that homicides are basically done by monster criminals. But what really seems to be going on is that as the number of guns increases, as more houses have guns, as the gun saturation in the society rises, it’s the availability of guns that turn ordinary interpersonal disputes, including domestic disputes, into lethal events.
And if sheer availability of firearms were the dispositive factor in determining whether disputes turned lethal, then the streets of DC and Chicago would be relatively placid, and rural Montana, Utah and North Dakota would be shooting galleries.
But the opposite is true.
And in fact one could note that murder in, say, Chicago – where guns are legally illegal – is far from evenly distributed; some neighborhoods are as safe as suburban Fargo, while others are vastly more dangerous than Baghdad.
And one could fairly note in response that parts of the rural South – where guns are generally very available – have fairly liberal gun laws and high rates of violence. But cities in those same areas are often quite statistically placid.
So when Dr. Miles says…:
So homicide looks very much like suicide in being gun-prevalence-driven.
…one must add “except when you look at actual facts and stuff”.
And? And? AND? – One of the left’s favorite tactics in the gun debate (as with so many debates) is to give an emotionally-chilling (and thus manipulative) factoid with no context whatsoever.
Right on cue:
MP: One of the statistics in your presentation that jumped out at me was the high number of American children who die in gun accidents. As you note, the accidental gun death rate is 11 times higher among 5- to 14-year-olds in the U.S. than the combined rates of 22 other high-income developed countries.
Hm. That must be some number.
SM: It’s a very sad number.
And I’m sure when we see that number – the number of children killed in accidents – it’ll make our hearts ache.
When you have a gun in the house, for kids there is a 16-fold increase in the risk of a lethal accident involving a gun.
Oh, my.
So what’s the number?
So, despite what everybody says about gun education and gunlocks, it just doesn’t work.
Hm. OK, so I’m sure the number will bear this out.
What’s the number, again?
A gun in the house is an accident just waiting to happen.
So you say, Dr. Miles. So what’s the number?
MP: As you also note in your presentation, the NRA…
Er, huh?
What’s the number?
According to the CDC, in the entire US, in 2010 (the latest numbers the CDC provides), the number of kids below 15 killed by firearms was…
And yep, every one of those deaths is a tragedy. Education and gun locks are no guarantee, but they do help. So does training gun owners in general.
But as a “public health” issue, accidental firearms deaths come in well below:
- Drownings (832)
- Accidental poisoning (220)
- Fires (372)
- Car accidents (forget about it; 1432)
And about the same as the number killed in falls (74).
And so I have to ask (since no “journalist” ever will) – while, as a parent, I recoil at even one child dying in an accident, I have to ask; what was Ms. Perry referring to when she said “One of the statistics in your presentation that jumped out at me was the high number of American children who die in gun accidents?” Tragic, yes. High?
Huh?
Schools Of Red Herrings Say “Huh?” – Miles next goes after the notion of armed self-defense with a hearty “I know you are but what am I?”
MP: As you also note in your presentation, the NRA often says that guns prevent their owners from becoming crime victims. In fact, they claim that huge numbers of gun owners find themselves in situations each year in which they are forced to use their weapons to defend themselves and their families.
SM: I spent some time tracking that down. [And by “some”, Miles apparently means “not a whole lot”. But I’m getting way ahead of myself – Ed.] Mostly, they cite an article from 1995 by Kleck and Gertz, which cites 2.5 million defensive gun uses per year. But the Cato Institute — which is an anti-gun-control conservative group — took a different approach. What they did is [search] eight years of news clippings. They found only a few hundred events over those eight years — somewhere around 450 or so. That’s a long way from 2.5 million.
This paragraph presents its “data” so very, very misleadingly that if I were a teacher grading Dr. Miles’ paper, I’d swat him on the knuckles with a ruler and have a word with him about intellectual honesty. To try to introduce him to the subject.
Let me count the misstatements, frauds and lies in the above statement:
- Only Two Sources? – Miles cites Kleck (whose seminal 1991 work Point Blank has been the main source for all sides in the debate), and an article by Cato – and that’s it? Our choices are 2.5 million a year or 450 over eight years? No reference to the FBI (which estimates about 80,000 deterrences a year)? Or even Kleck critic David Hemenway, who attempted to “invalidate” Kleck with an estimate of between 55,000 and 80,000 defensive gun uses per year?
- Misstating Cato – Cato’s research was of a completely different scope and intent than Kleck. While the research leading to Point Blank was a detailed, academic, scholarly investigation of national figures (Kleck is a professor of criminology), the Cato piece was a glorified blog post, and admitted as much: “it is important to remember that news reports can only provide us with an imperfect picture of defensive gun use in America”; the Cato piece also notes that “Gun control proponents cannot deny that people use guns successfully against criminals, but they tend to play down how often such events take place. The purpose of this map is to draw more attention to this aspect of the firearms policy debate”.
So Miles’ approach – compare an informal survey of news coverage to a detailed, peer-reviewed study of the subject – is academically ludicrous as well as intellectually void.
When one looks at the number of justifiable homicides — which does not include, for example, instances when citizens deterred a crime — even so, one is talking about less than 100 a year. So these events where there is a defense-of-gun use are actually extraordinarily rare, especially when one puts it in the context of somewhere around 30,000 gun deaths per year.
Miles is either ignorant, or lying. The FBI puts the number of defensive justifiable homicides at over 200 per year.
And why so bloodthirsty? Isn’t deterrence better than killing?
The Slow Steady Drip – Miles next moves to the case for turning doctors into agents of the state, and the Joyce Foundation:
MP: The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that pediatricians talk at least once a year with parents about the danger of guns. Why is that important?
SM: I think one of the things that’s important is for us to de-sanctify guns.
Their words, not ours.
We should treat a gun like we would any other risk factor for injury. We know that tobacco is a risk factor for injury, and we ask about it, even though there is no medical use for tobacco. We recognize that the non-use of bicycle helmets is a risk for injury, and so we ask about those. And we should ask about guns because this is an important way to protect the public health.
And in the first two cases, doctors and their data have been used to further political as well as scientific ends. There’s neither a constitutional right nor any especially emotional imperative to ride without a helmet; smoking is filthy and dangerous, but while the public health case against the practice is justifiable, the political infringements on free association, property rights and individual choice are precisely why many gun-owning liberty-conscious people are pushing back at “scientists” poking into our personal data…
…to feed an attack on something that is a constitutional right.
The Conservative War On Straw – Boogeymen! Boogeymen!
MP: Rush Limbaugh has said that this makes doctors “deputies [and] agents of the state.”
SM: Rush Limbaugh and his partners have made many claims [about the Affordable Care Act] that are not scientifically based, including death panels and all the rest of it, and this is just more of the same.
Managed Care is “death panels”, and who the hell cares?
Miles does!
I think the issue here comes down to anti-science. In many ways, the pro-gun groups, including the NRA, act like other industrial anti-science groups, such as the tobacco lobby and the soft-drink manufacturers when they were trying to defend soft drinks in school. What these groups do is construct false facts, and they do their best to prevent real science from being done. That’s what we’re seeing with gun violence as well.
But as we’ve shown throughout this piece, it’s Dr. Miles who’s constructed “facts”, omitted more, and beggared the notion of intellectual inquiry in his appeal to ignorance and incuriosity.
Bonus question: Does it ever occur to Susan Perry to press Miles on any of this?
Or is that not what she’s being paid for?
Bravo.
Ditto Mr. D’s comment. The MinnPost is like one of those trade magazines where a large advertiser gets an article that is made to look like editorial content but is in fact a glowing, puff piece written by the advertisers marketing department with the able help of the magazines writers. What. A. Joke.
Susan Perry – Proud Member, Organ Grinder Monkey Guild, local 714.
I think that a good analogy might be motorcycle helmet laws.
It is probably true that if motorcyclists were required to wear approved helmets there would be fewer head injuries and deaths resulting from motorcycle accidents.
It is probably also true that if car drivers were required to wear helmets there would be fewer head injuries and deaths resulting from car accidents.
Every year or two, legislatures across the country introduce bills that would require motorcycle riders and passengers to wear helmets. Sometimes they pass, sometimes they do not. Yet no one is seriously proposing that car drivers be required to wear helmets.
Why not?
Because politics is neither rational nor scientific. Politics is an expression of social organization that goes back thousands, maybe millions of years. Science has been around since the 1600’s.
If you mix politics and science, you don’t get scientific politics. You get politicized science.
If you mix politics and science, you don’t get scientific politics. You get politicized science.
I’m stealing that.
Ditto.
Leftist taking over oganizations, can then use those as an absolute moral authority to promote liberal causes that have little to do with the original intent of the organization.
-NAACP and a host of wacky policies
-Sierra Club and being anti-Sience when comes to mining and nuclear power.
-ELCA and anti-Israel (and pro-abortion and pro-gay marriage)
-SLPC and….well everything they do
-And don’t forget last week’s news….the leasers of our armed forces said evangelical Christians and Catholics are dangerous hate groups.
Economics is a science. Ask a liberal political type how we are going to deal with our $100T unfunded liabilities. They will say that we don’t have to make any changes, except raise taxes on other people, and can even expand those programs, and we will be fine. That is as ignorant about economic science as saying the sun revolves around the Earth is to natural science.
Governor Scott Walker understands economic facts. Governor Dayton doesn’t.
Mitch, ripping the pelt off this moonbat in this fashion is exactly why the Minnpost censors conservative comments. In fact, it was the thoroughly enjoyable deconstruction of the leftist “anti-science” meme as relates to the Anthropomorphic Global Warming scam is what finally drove them to refuse to post my comments at all.
Now that the sad news for fans of pseudo-science is beginning to reach the point at which it can no longer be shouted down ( http://www.aaronsenvironmental.com/2012/09/is-the-current-global-warming-a-natural-cycle/ ), count on the left to simply disavow their previous support for it. “We’ve *always* been at war with East Asia, Winston”
Attacking the 2nd amendment however, is a tailor made activity for the low information, low intelligence base leftist power mongers count upon to regurgitate their propaganda because the “science” is wholly contained in statistics, and we all know about how flexable statistics are.
Which is why it is so important to tear them apart whenever they are presented as the basis upon which a fact based argument is being supported.
Terry, I think that quote might be worth framing.
It’s not my quote. I’m paraphrasing some writer, can’t remember who.
FYI, I’ve never been able to get a liberal to explain to me the scientific basis for considering a person with downs syndrome the equal of a person w/o downs syndrome.
If you are a person with downs syndrome or you love a person with downs syndrome, you do not want their humanity to be determined ‘scientifically’.
Could, perhaps, the good Doctor be persuaded to debate someone armed (pun intended) with some actual facts?
After all is said and done, the pitiful victims are used-up, and all the soccer moms have been indoctrinated, most of this boils down to the fact that those with the means to do anything are more likely to die by them than those who don’t. Gun owners are more likely to die by them than non-owners because the crucial element is present. Schnauzer owners are more likely to be killed in their sleep by a small dog than a non dog owner.
However, dress this all up in numbers, tears, and demons and it can look pretty impressive, almost even truthful unless examined by someone with knowlege of the topic or a passing interest in the issue. I am disappointed that more neutral parties don’t bring this to the public’s attention. I guess they’d have to buy their own large MSM outlet to accomplish that …
I maintain that the issue of AIDS prevention could be plugged into most anti-gun arguments and proposed “solutions” (in lieu of firearms) and be argued just as effectively. Registration, mandatory testing, onerous requirements, permits, and public notifications of “participants” would be more effective as “health control” as “gun safety,” replete with “common sense'” “reasonable,” and demands for justification (“Nobody needs to do THAT ..”).
The “if it saves just one life” validation more than applies to the AIDS epidemic; in 2010 North America, 20,000 poor souls died from complications of AIDS, 1.3 million persons were carriers of the HIV/Aids virus, and there were 58,000 new infections. Children are included in all statistics. This info. was gathered from various internet sources; take them for what they’re worth.
Those who endorse gun control because of it’s societal impact should not, in good conscience, not endorse the same reasoning as applied to the AIDS epidemic. Fat chance.
Again, it is not my intent to make light of poor souls afflicted with this terrible disease. I use their plight only as a means of comparison …
Suicide is a complex problem, and deserves more analysis than can be fitted into a single blog post. Suicide rates are affected by everything from demographics to economics, culture and mental-health-care provisions. But there is a lot of research to indicate that death rates are affected by the availability of methods of suicide that leave no chance for second thoughts (eg, by calling an ambulance after taking an overdose).
Fatal injuries involving firearms offenses in England and Wales in 2011: 42. (I) Homicides in England and Wales involving firearms in 2011: 39. Suicides involving firearms in England and Wales in 2011: 90. (II)
The population of England and Wales in 2011 was about 56.1m. That gives the following rates: firearm crime fatalities—0.75 per million; gun homicides—0.7 per million; gun suicide rates—1.6 per million.
Or put another way, residents of England and Wales have a gun homicide rate 21 times lower than that among white Americans, and 215 times lower than that among black Americans, and a gun suicide rate 47 times lower than that among white Americans.
Other forms of murder and suicide do not make up the difference. The overall American homicide rate in 2008 was 54 per million per year. The overall homicide rate in England and Wales in 2011 was 9.6 per million. The overall suicide rate in America in 2009 was 117 per million. The overall suicide rate in England and Wales in 2011 was 87 per million.(III)
We already have 300 million firearms in circulation. That’s the real problem. How do we live more safely in a country that has so many guns in private hands? Nobody is really talking about that.
They are available to the person in the household. They have the firearm either for protection or sporting purposes. But it often turns to one of their family members to die from that weapon. There has to be some discussion among family members about that issue. People need to be talking about how guns are stored in the home. And who gets to say how the guns are stored in the home.
(I) http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-stats/crime-statistics/focus-on-violent-crime/stb-focus-on–violent-crime-and-sexual-offences-2011-12.html#tab-SECTION-3-%E2%80%93-RECORDED-OFFENCES-INVOLVING-THE-USE-OF-FIREARMS
(II) http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/injury-and-poisoning-mortality-in-england-and-wales/2011/rft-injury-and-poisoning-mortality-2011.xls
(III) http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/statistics/leading_causes.html
Emery, your post is quite informative, far better thought-out than the MinnPost article cited by Mr. Berg.
However, I cannot embrace the gun alone as a causal factor, at least a significant one. Certainly its presence facilitates its use, and its function facilitates the task. We must acknowlege what the gun was designed for; defense and offense (killing), hopefully in lawful contexts. If all a person wanted to to was practice the accurate placement of a small object over a long distance they could play golf. So obviously, the gun provides the correct tool for the job.
Many here are gun owners, yet are not dead or incarcerated. Why? They are not suicidal in the first place.
My best general suggestion for suicidal prevalence (or acceptance) is culture. And right now, I don’t believe that the United States has one. Maybe it has many, and maybe it’s in transition. In any event it certainly isn’t stable enough to provide an accurate snapshot of what “we” are now.
My (obvious) example of a stable culture with a well-defined gun perspective is Japan. My short internet investigation shows that Japan has a suicide rate of 26 per 100,000. To me, this would translate to a suicide rate of 260/1,000,000. I didn’t look into the means, but I’m sure that firearms use is insgnificant. However, the Japanese have a well-known history (and cultural acceptance) of suicide. Would it be even higher if firearms were introduced into their culture? I really doubt it.
As related to our rate of suicide, there is one factor that may be significant. Those who commit suicide by aggressive means; gun, hanging, or other proactive methods leave little doubt. Particularly if a note is found.
However, drug overdoses are frequently ambigous – particularly in Hollywood. Also, notes are not always found. Or disclosed to authorities. A certain amount of traumatic deaths could easily be determined to be suicide if coraborating evidence is present. A bit of a stretch, but it is not unheard-of. The internet also make the distribution (as well as with-holding) of the farewell message quite easy. No turning back once your announcement goes viral. And no one knows if the single recipient keeps their mouth shut. Much of a factor? I don’t know, but it does happen.
Indeed the gun is a useful tool when killing is involved. It is currently the means of choice. However, I believe that the important choice – to do it – is not often determined by the means. Humble opinion …
My problem with using suicide as the excuse to regulate guns is the same as using mass-shootings to regulate standard-capacity magazines: it accepts the premise but tinkers with the method. To me, that’s unacceptable. We should reject the premise.
The premise is yes, people will be killed in gun-free zones but if we regulate magazines, they’ll die more slowly waiting for magazine changes. But the reason people are being killed is they are defenseless. Why not put armed guards in the gun-free zones to prevent the killings in the first place?
Similarly, the premise is yes, people will kill themselves with guns but if we regulate guns, they’ll die more slowly from other methods. But the reason people are killing themselves is they’re mentally ill. Why not put them in treatment centers to prevent the suicide in the first place?
My point is to use best practices when there is a firearm in the home. The firearm should be stored safely and securely.
The statistics say that whites are far more likely to shoot themselves, and blacks are far more likely to be shot by someone else.
A white person is five times as likely to commit suicide with a gun as to be shot with a gun; for each black person who uses a gun to commit suicide, five are killed by other people with guns.
Where a person lives matters, too. Gun deaths in urban areas are much more likely to be homicides, while suicide is far and away the dominant form of gun death in rural areas. States with the most guns per capita, such as Montana and Wyoming, have the highest suicide rates; states with low gun ownership rates, such as Massachusetts and New York, have far fewer suicides per capita.
If I had to choose one thing, I would try to reduce access and availability of firearms. A securely stored firearm in a gun vault is much less likely to fall into the hands of children, or others in the home whom you do not wish to be in possession of your firearms.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm
Not so sure I trust the CDC; the folks there want to classify shooting deaths as a disease.
OK then, let’s look at the NIH (National Institute of Health) statistics.
In 2010 suicide accounted for 61% of gun-injury deaths in America.
More guns at home means more child deaths. Surprised?
A study by scholars at the Harvard School of Public Health, published in February’s Journal of Trauma, finds that, when it comes to killing children, guns do help. Over the period studied, 1988-97, nearly 7,000 children aged between five and 14 were killed with firearms.
Before an American child reaches 15, he or she is 12 times more likely to die of gunshot wounds than a child anywhere else in the industrialized world. It is possible, as the authors point out, that people who live in states with high rates of child homicide may buy guns to protect themselves. But that cannot explain the relationship between guns and suicide and accidents.
The lesson is simple. More guns, which are not stored and secured properly, kill more children and adults.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11834986
Emery, I think that it is a mistake to view the 2nd amendment as somehow less important than the other enumerated rights in the constitution. We don’t view freedom of speech or freedom of religion in the light of how they may be misused. We don’t demand that they be subject to a litmus test of how useful some Americans, especially the federal government, thinks that they are.
The 2nd amendment (among other things) fosters the notion that we, the American people, are sovereign. We are capable of forming militias and keeping order without direction from the state. How can it be that we, the people, are the source of sovereignty, are assumed to be competent to elect leaders who control armies and WMD that are almost unimaginably destructive, yet we are not considered competent to own a rifle or pistol w/o the government telling us how we may store it?
Terry:
I think you may have misread my previous post or else my post was unclear.
/They [firearms] are available to the person[s] in the household. They have the firearm either for protection or sporting purposes. But it often turns to one of their family members to die from that weapon. There has to be some discussion among family members about that issue. People need to be talking about how guns are stored in the home. And who [in the family] gets to say how the guns are stored in the home./
My only concern is the safe and secure storage of firearms.
I think Emery has come to the right conclusion: firearms ownership and usage by law-abiding citizens is an internal family matter, which is not to be infringed by the government. No government gun control. No limitation on number of firearms or magazine size. No laws requiring defensive firearms to be stripped down and locked away. Just a family, making family decisions, without outside interference. That’s exactly right, Emery. I completely agree.
“The statistics say… blacks are far more likely to be shot by someone else.”
They are also far more likely to shoot someone else…still has no bearing on my right to arm myself.
Emery, you must get real tired of lugging around goal posts, huh? Joe, great job at tearing apart Emery’s intellectually dishonest (or likely lazy) use of numbers and context.
Wow, I saw 23 comments this morning and thought for sure DG had done one of her patented drive-by comments.
RE: Emery’s statistics on homicide rates. Yes, England has far fewer homicides because they have far fewer guns.
On the flip side of Engand has less guns/England has less homicide, England has about 5X the violent crime rate of the US.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html
I’m pretty sure that while there is debate over how many DGUs happen in this country, there should be NO debate over the fact that there are NO DGUs in England.
I’d like to see statistics that talk about how many suicides by firearm and non-gang related firearm deaths there are in this country. Why do I specify those two conditions? Because chances are that the number of gang-related homicides by people legally able to own a gun are single digit, if not zero. Let’s find out how many suicides, crimes of passion, and drunken stupidity homicides there were. Then let’s look at death rates. I’m at work and I’m taking up too much time even typing up this comment, let alone trying to dig thru the available stats according to my desired filters.
The interview was posted like two days after a motorcyclist died in Brooklyn Park – while wearing a helmet. Not to argue with the science …
Was surprised at the lack of comments on this interview at MinnPost. Usually, if the topic is guns, cigarettes, or helmets there is a whole chorus of the usual syncophants teethgnashing at the miscreants. I figured that when the doctor lumped in multiple sex partners and gay sex, that a a lot of the members felt guiltily or indignantly incriminated.
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